Axtell residents see severe storm damage

Residents in Axtell are cleaning up after Monday night's storms brought damage to the area.

Donny Stanley was in Oklahoma, on the phone with his wife, after a tornado warning went out in the area.

"It was not one of my happier moments," Stanley said.

He stayed on the phone as his wife and two daughters took cover in the bathroom during the worst of the storm. When they left the house, they found the transformer down and trees around the property snapped.

As Stanley came back into town, he braced himself for the potential damage. He found that only parts of the town had been hit. At his own home, a 30-year-old tree lay snapped in the front yard by the wind.

"To come home and see it laying here... It's a pretty tree. It has some pretty blooms on it in the spring, and it was just getting ready to bloom," Stanley said.

Stanley wasn't the only one hit. His next door neighbor Diane Williams didn't see the storm, but she heard it.

"The lightning sounded like a gunshot and the wind shook the entire house," said Williams.

Williams said she never experienced a storm that severe her whole life. In total due, she lost three trees and had limbs strewn about the property.

"It was a twister or something up in the sky. Across the street at the school, they had a couple trees down and my neighbor had a tree down; my dad has a tree down," said Williams.

Despite the pattern, the official word is no tornado in Axtell. Tornado or not, the damage is real and Williams is ready to for the cleanup.

"Easter, after we eat, we're going to be out here cleaning," said Williams.

A West Texas man has pleaded guilty in the death of his 18-year-old stepdaughter who authorities say was repeatedly subjected to sexual abuse before she was fatally stabbed and her uterus was cut from her body.

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